IBM Corp is finally giving mainframe users of the venerable DB2 database a chance to get their hands on some of the updated technology it’s been offering for some time to other users. On Monday, IBM announced a beta program for DB2 Universal Database for OS/390 at the DB2 Users Group conference in San Francisco, billing it as the first object/relational database for the mainframe. The new version, the successor to DB2 for OS/390 Version 5.0, is not a port of the Unix, NT and OS/2 versions, which share 90% of their code in common, but does include the object relational database support and DB2 extenders for text, image, audio and video that first appeared on those platforms in 1995. Version 6 will also see improved Java support through JDBC and SQLJ, better ODBC support and general performance and availability improvements. IBM starts its beta test program in September this year, and DB2 Universal Database for OS/390 Version 6 should be out on the general market six to nine months later. Pricing will be revealed once the product becomes available. IBM boasts it is seeing year-on-year growth rates of 60% and above in the data management space, and even the 15 year old DB2 for OS/390 and 30 year-old IMS database continue to see growth rates of 11%. IBM is so bullish about its products that it persuaded chief executive Lou Gerstner to authorize the hiring of 1,000 more sales people to work on D2 and related software area over the next two years.
